Catalan specialist publishes new collection of Orwellian articles

George Or­well was ob­sessed with how the truth is pre­sented, a trait most ev­i­dent in the nu­mer­ous ar­ti­cles he penned. In homage of the great Eng­lish nov­el­ist, es­say­ist, jour­nal­ist and critic, Cat­alo­nia’s most recog­nised spe­cial­ist in his work, Miquel Berga, has se­lected 10 of Or­well’s es­says on lan­guage, pol­i­tics and truth and com­piled them in a new work en­ti­tled El poder y la pal­abra. 10 en­sayos sobre lenguaje, política y ver­dad.

For many read­ers, Or­well’s writ­ing rep­re­sents a genre of lit­er­a­ture even more de­val­ued than the essay: that of the com­mit­ted writer who, unashamed of the ide­ol­ogy he de­fends, re­fuses to budge from the eth­i­cal po­si­tion he has adopted. Or­well’s Homage to Cat­alo­nia is a book that has re­sisted the pas­sage of time for many rea­sons, one being the con­vic­tion, the iron moral in­tegrity, that guides the en­tire text.

For oth­ers, Or­well is the au­thor of mem­o­rable works of fic­tion, even if they come under the um­brella of fable or po­lit­i­cal satire, such as Nine­teen Eighty-four and An­i­mal farm.

But be­hind all this hides a more am­bi­tious lit­er­ary Or­well: the jour­nal­ist who, con­trary to all or­tho­doxy, pur­sued the truth with ab­solute in­tegrity, and that is what Berga cap­tures in his new col­lec­tion.